


Three's A Crowd

by Velvedere



Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard
Genre: Angst, Comic Canon, Feels, Feels and Porn, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Morning After, Porn, Smut, Waffles, i just want all the lokis sitting around and talking to each other okay?, lots of lokis, old loki - Freeform, one loki, three!, two loki, young loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:23:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent of Asgard!Loki goes to have a chat with his older self while rescuing Thor from a spell trapping his mind.</p>
<p>Things don't go well.</p>
<p>(i.e. Everything I Wanted From The Comics And Will Never Get)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was cold in there.

Loki only noted the sensation as odd because cold didn’t usually bother him.

He stood for a moment in the square of light that fell in from the opened doorway, checkered along its edges by the floating bricks hovering around the gap in the wall. The gap would close soon behind him, stone and mortar sliding back into tight formation to seal in the darkness. That he’d been able to access it at all Loki didn’t attribute to any genius or skill on his part. The magic binding this place recognized him. It let him in, perhaps wondering what he’d been doing on the other side in the first place.

What light made it in didn’t do much to illuminate the dark and dank dungeon cell.

This place ate light.

The wall warped behind him, closing the cell back into its jar of dark and quiet. Loki stood absolutely still as he waited for his eyes to adjust.

Somewhere, water dripped.

He could hear the scratch of small feet high over his head as rats scurried through the maze of support beams criss-crossing Asgardia’s lower levels. A similar sound came also from down below, near his boots.

Who knew? Asgardia had rats.

_More than one kind_ , his thoughts supplied for him, as he squinted through the dark to make out the barest of distinct shapes.

“I should think the All-Mother would have found better accomodations for their own private agent,” he said to the dark. “Or you would have at least done some decorating by now.”

A voice slid from the shadows. Sinuous and oily.

“A good assassin learns to stay close to its target.”

A dull green light sparked to life in a censer hanging near a chair backed against the cell’s opposite wall. Like everything else in this place, the metal of it was old and rusted. The wood of the chair – an old throne by its build – sat damp and rotting. A lot like the thin and twisted vulture perching upon it.

“An assassin,” Loki said, eying his older self with a disdainfully wrinkled nose. “Is that what you are now?”

Older Loki grinned. His rictus smile stretched back over sharp jutting cheekbones and chin. He leaned, casually lopsided on his decrepit throne, fingers steepled.

“I’ve always been an assassin,” he smiled. “Of character.”

Loki – the younger one – folded his arms over his chest.

“I wonder what the All-Mother would think to hear that.”

“Oh, they know.”

Loki’s older, future self – or so he claimed – reached out to pluck a bit of green flame from the burning censer. He let it dance over his fingers like spindles. It split into two flames. Then three. Twirling and flickering.

“It’s hardly a secret. But my place with them remains the same. I’ve shown them the future, and it’s one they want to see. How it comes about is of little consequence.”

“Oh. Of course.” Loki shrugged one shoulder. “As sure as you’ve never volunteered to elaborate on the details.”

“And they’ve never asked.” Older Loki smiled. “They know better.”

“First tip-off.” Loki glanced around them. The firelights cast the cell in a dull, sickly green. “You’re content to sit in this squalor. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it suits you perfectly—”

Older Loki’s smile briefly flickered. Became a scowl.

“—but the Loki I remember would have never been content with this.”

“You don’t remember me. I haven’t happened yet.”

“That’s right. You’re Has-Been 2.0.”

“Hrnn.”

“But you remember me, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you remember this conversation?”

“Quite. It was very informative.”

“How does it end?”

Older Loki chuckled. A sound like a dying wheeze. He leaned far forward in his seat, back bent into a hunch casting a bestial shadow on the wall.

He grinned, cheshire in the dark.

“That,” he said, tapping his nose, “would be telling.”

He moved his fingers. The flames dancing over his palm and cracked nails spiraled out and away from him. They drifted through the air until they settled into orbit around his younger self.

Loki eyed them with a sidelong glance.

“Then if it’s all the same to you,” Loki – the younger Loki – hummed, “could we go ahead and skip to that part? I’ve kind of got a lot on my plate right now.”

“Oh,” Older Loki pouted. “Can we not indulge in at least a little debate about the nature of destiny versus free will? You know how we love a good argument.”

“We could. But you already know everything I’ll say.”

“That doesn’t make it less entertaining.”

Loki swatted without real effort at one of the lights when it drifted too near his face. He blew loose hair from his eyes.

“That’s not really why I’m here.”

“Of course not.”

“But you know that already.”

“Of course I do.”

“So let’s just say we’ve done all the banter and mindgames and get to the point.”

Loki – older Loki – laughed.

“One doesn’t have to be from the future to know what you’re here for,” he said, and drew his tongue along his teeth. “Not even one game?”

“Nope.”

“You’re certain?”

“Pretty certain.”

“Why not? The one you’re thinking of would be an excellent test.”

Loki’s eyebrow twitched. Self-consciously he slid one hand into the pocket of his coat. The green of the dancing flames reflected in Older Loki’s dark eyes as he watched him, his posture tense with giddy delight.

“Alright,” Loki exhaled, bracing himself. “What did I make sure to put in my pocket before I came here?”

“Ah, trick question!” Older Loki cackled and held up one ancient finger. “You have lots of pockets. I answer: your invisibility amulet, and you say ‘nope! wrong pocket!’”

Loki’s eyebrow twitched again.

He didn’t like it when horrible older versions of himself trespassing from the future to muck about with time proved themselves right.

Loki took his hand out of his pocket.

He put it on the hilt of his sword.

“Where’s Thor?” he said.

“Oh. Such a sore loser.” Older Loki sneered. “And bad manners. I forgot what a rude young man I used to be.”

Loki gripped the hilt a little tighter.

“No games, old man. Where is Thor?”

He was no longer casual. Beneath the horns of his crown his eyes glared sharp through the dark. He took no note of the movement of the dancing lights.

Older Loki ceased his grinning as well. He leaned back in his seat, drummed his fingers on the arm, then shrugged.

“He’s right here. Where he’s always been. Right at my side.”

The lights darted away from Loki to illuminate an alcove cut into one of the far cell walls.

Loki was almost certain it hadn’t been there a moment ago.

Thor stood there. Well. Unarmed. His eyes were downcast and his steps sluggish as he moved out, positioned himself to stand beside Older Loki’s throne.

Loki could practically smell the enchantment on him, it lay so thick.

“Tacky,” he said. “And cliché.”

“And yet it worked.” Older Loki reached out to pat Thor’s shoulder. “Oh, I half expected it wouldn’t. By now one would think he’d be used to our little tricks. But when a heart is willing enough to be drawn...” He shrugged again.

Loki ignored him.

He looked to his brother.

“Thor?”

Nothing.

“Thor? Can you hear me?”

“It’s alright,” purred Older Loki, tucking back a lock of Thor’s hair behind his ear. “You can answer.”

Thor lifted his head. Slow. Uncoordinated. His eyes saw nothing around him.

“Loki,” he murmured. “I hear you.”

“What has he told you to do?”

“To...wait for you. Here.” The words came heavy. As slurred as the rest of him. “Until you were both here.”

“Has he told you why?”

Thor looked to him. It seemed an effort. But he strained, looking to Loki until he met his gaze.

“To...help you,” he said, and frowned, confused even in his state. Loki didn’t doubt for an instant that Thor was fighting even then, somewhere in his own depths. Fighting at the deepest core of himself to regain control over his own body.

“To help you...feel...”

Loki paused a moment. His mouth formed a hard line.

“Has he hurt you?”

“No.”

“He’s not lying,” said Older Loki, gesturing. “You can use Gram, if you like.”

“I don’t have to.” Loki shook his head, willing his grip on the sword to loosen before it cramped. “Thor’s not the lying sort. And...I know you wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Oh-ho. So certain?” Loki sniffed in disdain. “Why?”

Loki – younger Loki – looked to Thor.

“Because I wouldn’t hurt him.”

Older Loki scoffed.

“I think you vastly underestimate the amount I’ve changed.” He leered. “That is what you wanted, wasn’t it? To _change?_ ”

Loki’s face remained a stoic mask.

“Why does it matter to you?” he mumbled, keeping his voice low. “You already exist. Your present has come true. Why travel back in time to make sure it happens?” There he arched his brow and looked back to his older self. A little upward tilt of his chin. “Unless there’s a chance it won’t?”

“Maybe it’s circular?” Older Loki answered with ease. “You know how things revolve. Time cycles. I came back to ensure my future because that’s how it happened to me, and so on, and so on.”

“But someone had to start it.”

“It never started. It always was.”

“So you’re content with predictability, too?” Loki huffed a breath. “My, how you’ve fallen.”

“Or perhaps I simply learned to accept who and what I was, and that nothing would ever change it.”

“Destiny? Really?” Loki glanced to the ceiling. “Now I know you’re not me.”

“Not yet. A lot can happen in a few thousand years.”

Loki sighed and put a hand on his brow, rubbing it wearily.

“So we’re debating destiny versus free will after all. Ugh.” He waved his hand. “I’ll just take Thor and go now. Thanks.”

He crossed the cell to where Thor stood. He reached out, took his arm, nudged him with a push in the direction of the door-wall. Thor looked down at the contact and then to Loki. His gaze passed right through him. There was no spark of life or flicker of Thor’s true self. He didn’t appear to even recognize him.

Loki internally twitched.

Older Loki chuckled. A particularly dark, knowing snicker.

“So jaded,” he mused. “So calm and cool and collected. Nothing makes you bristle, does it?”

“The All-Mother burying her collective head in the sand just might. Come on, Thor. We’re leaving.”

Thor didn’t budge.

Older Loki laughed.

“But it wouldn’t really, would it? I remember.” He hunched in his chair and drew a finger along his chin, watching with high, unhidden amusement. “I remember. You couldn’t care less what happens to Asgardia or those who live there. You never really belonged in that place. Not even as a boy.”

“Which time?” Loki glanced at him, casual. “The first or the second?”

“There! See? There it is. Ah, that blasé attitude. That lack of feeling.” Older Loki readopted the steepled fingers he’d been positioned with when the younger one first arrived. Thoughtful. Calculating. “That’s been plaguing you since before you can remember this form, hasn’t it?”

Loki narrowed his eyes, wary of his footing. He kept one hand on Thor’s arm, though he seemed incapable of moving him on his own.

Part of him was grateful for the barrier.

“What are you talking about?”

Older Loki chuckled.

“You call me less true to ourselves because of the ways in which I’ve changed. This degradation. This acceptance. But you are just as guilty. For what is Loki without feeling? Without passion? Has that not always been a defining characteristic of ourselves? How intensely we _feel?_ ”

“I feel plenty,” said Loki. “Disgust, for one.”

“Is that so?” Older Loki glanced aside to Thor, who stood by, silently awaiting instruction. “I think others would beg to differ.”

“Let him go and he just might.”

“Well. If you insist...”

Older Loki waved his hand, and the dull light in Thor’s eyes immediately sharpened. He blinked, straightened. Returned to life.

“What...? Where is...?” He cast his eyes about them, settling on Loki last. “Brother!”

He clapped one hand over Loki’s resting on his arm.

Loki tensed.

Thor turned, and his hands moved to Loki’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length with a comforting and familiar strength. He gripped his coat and looked at him, overjoyed, as though he’d not seen him in centuries.

“Loki! You’re here! You...are you well?” Concerned, he brushed a hand through his hair, his look more intent. “Were you harmed in coming here?”

“No, Thor.” Loki turned his face aside as a child would under its mothers fussing. “I’m fine.”

“Thank the Norns. Loki. Oh, Loki...”

Thor stepped in closer. He brushed Loki’s fall of hair away with the back of his hand. He looked to him, over his eyes and face, once more in lovelost wonder.

“It’s been so long.” His voice grew stretched. Pained. “Why did you never send me word?”

He cupped Loki’s cheek before Loki could properly answer, kissed him and breathed over his skin when Loki pulled his face away. He fell to Loki’s neck, pulling him into his arms, scraping the rough beginnings of beard against him.

“Loki. I’ve missed you.”

Loki glanced aside to his older self, dubious as he let Thor carry on with his affections.

“Really?” he said. “This is truly the best you could come up with?”

“You came back for him,” said Older Loki.

Thor continued to kiss him.

“Devotion to duty,” said Loki, unresponsive. “I owe him that much.” He turned his head to avoid Thor catching his mouth so he could still speak. His hands remained at his sides.

“And better not to leave him in your care.”

“Is that all there is?”

“Well, there’s also the fact the All-Mother only needs a small excuse to wipe the rest of my existence from known history.”

“But they won’t. Will they? They need us.”

Loki flinched. Ground his teeth briefly together.

Thor had found his ear.

“They need you,” he grumbled.

“But we’re one in the same.”

“No. We’re not. Thor, _stop_.” Loki lifted his hands. He pushed against Thor’s chest to shove him back before Thor got too carried away. Already the front of Loki’s shirt had been undone, its leather ties trailing.

Thor stopped, stumbling back a step before reorienting himself. When he did, he looked to Loki with such hurt. His skin flushed red and his lips parted. His hair lay tangled. Unwashed. A little dirty from however long the older Loki had been keeping him here. But the pain in his eyes as he looked to him was the worst.

It struck something against Loki’s heart that he did not want to acknowledge. Or Thor to see.

“Loki,” Thor breathed, hesitant even as he was quick to reach for him again. “What is it?” He didn’t seem aware of the other Loki’s presence, or that the two fractured reflections spoke.

Loki sighed and let him touch his cheek. Thor took it as encouragement and stepped in, though not quite so eager as before.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“No, Thor. It’s not you. It’s not...” Loki sighed once more, turning his face away. The tightness that had been growing in his throat felt as though it had risen. Pressure mounted somewhere behind the level of his eyes. Threatened to spill over.

The bridge of his nose burned.

Thor kissed him again anyway. Cheek. Throat. Brow. Whatever he could reach.

“I am sorry, brother. For whatever I have done,” he said, low and rough. “Whatever drove you away and kept you for so long, I am sorry. I would...I would make amends. Whatever I must do, I will do it. Only tell me.”

Another kiss, long and lingering, just at the hollow of Loki’s throat.

Warm breath curling over his skin.

Thor’s whisper.

“I want you back.”

Loki lifted his eyes to the ceiling. His breath caught. He looked for a snappy retort. He looked for...something. He didn’t know what. Anything he could grab onto and pull himself up. Away from Thor’s bared heart.

“I’m sorry, too, Thor,” he said instead, swallowing a gulp of cooler air. “For dragging you into this. It shouldn’t have happened. You...you really deserve better.”

“We were wed once,” Older Loki whispered.

“We were,” Thor echoed.

“In fact we were rather insistant upon it.”

Loki closed his eyes. He remembered.

“What do you want?” He at last snapped. He glared to his other, allegedly older self, still seated on his throne. Thor had fallen to his knees before him and gripped him about the waist, nuzzling into the folds of his coat. Loki put his hands on Thor’s shoulders and gripped tight, both to stall him and to stay him.

His voice felt tighter than it should.

“What could you possibly hope to gain by this?”

Older Loki’s smile split his face. He leaned forward, very carefully, and very deliberately. The green glow of the dancing fires still hovering near lit up the lines in his face. The madness in his eyes. Lips stretched back over his teeth so far they cracked and split.

Then came his voice, deceptively soft. Infinitely familiar.

“Why, Loki,” he said, almost a purr. “I want you to remember what you’ve forgotten.”

Thor squeezed him tight.

“I want you to _burn_.”

_“NO!”_

Loki shoved Thor away. He broke free of his arms and turned, rounding on his older self.

He drew Gram from its sheath.

The blade caught and held what little light the cell had to offer and turned it into its own, radiating a golden gleam.

“I am not you!” Loki snarled at the retreating shadows. He spun the sword around him, slashing at them, making them flee. “I will _never_ be you! You’re everything I’ve tried to erase! _Everything!_ ” Loki seethed. “ _I hate you._ ”

Older Loki laughed, pitched back and feet kicking like a delighted child.

“Yes!” he cackled. “Yes, that’s it! There’s the conviction!”

Loki rushed at him, up the raised dias and onto the throne. He raised the sword in both hands, ready to bring it down with all his strength right onto that manic grin.

His face was alight, a terror of murderous rage. But his eyes...

In Loki’s eyes was the dark cold of a glacial fissure, prepared to slice through entire continents.

Older Loki welcomed him in with open arms.

“Come to me, boy.”

_“Rrrraaaaaahh!”_

Loki stabbed downward.

The other Loki caught the sword, turned its blade with a twist, and used the momentum to break the weapon free from Loki’s grip and slam it to the hilt in his back.

Loki fell, catching himself against the throne seat. He coughed, gasped, buckled under the radiant power as Gram erupted. The cell became innundated with brilliant gold light, bursting forth in waves.

Loki felt it crackle from the blade between his ribs.

“Now,” Older Loki hissed over his shoulder. “Tell us how you _really_ feel.”

Loki held his breath, certain he could stand against it. If he strained, kept control of himself, held on long enough...hard enough...he could overcome the sword’s power.

And, for a moment, nothing happened.

Then he lifted his head to see a boy sitting cross-legged on the throne in front of him, cheeks puffed and chin in one hand.

He was not happy to see him.

“You killed me,” said the boy, scowling.

“I’m...sorry,” Loki gasped, before he could stop himself. His arms trembled where they barely kept hold of the throne’s edge. Bearing the weight of the sword was near impossible.

“Not as sorry as you should be.”

The boy kicked out, catching him between the horns.

Loki fell back onto on the floorstones. He lay on his side, curled up and writhing, as the boy stood up on the throne.

“You killed me, and you didn’t have any reason to!” He set his hands on his hips. “Now look at you. Boo-hoo! I don’t feel anything! No connections to anybody! I’m not a real boy!”

He pointed vehemently across the room to Thor, who had fallen back against the wall in the blast. He blinked now and shook his head.

“You made Thor cry!”

“I...I had to,” Loki sputtered in weak protest. He tried to push himself up. “I had to. I didn’t want to, but...I needed...I needed a new start! Somewhere to...”

“To change. I know. Because I wouldn’t and he won’t.” The boy jumped down from the throne. He marched across the space to where Loki sprawled. “Because I didn’t want to change! I was happy! Thor and I had something. And you ruined it!”

He kicked him once more when Loki tried to rise, then leaned over, hands on his knees.

“And you didn’t fix anything at all, did you?” His young face sneered, its haunting familiarity all the more demonic for seemingly youthful innocence. “You know you lost something in the change. Now you’re not even sure if you’re you anymore. You think you’re just a sliver of a person. A facet.”

“How does the truth feel, liar?” Older Loki chimed in from behind. “To be a liar and confronted by truth—”

“Shush, you!” the boy snapped.

Older Loki shushed.

The boy reached down and grabbed the lapels of Loki’s coat, yanking him up from the ground enough that their eyes met level.

He glared, none too gentle.

“Look. We haven’t had the chance to talk like this yet, and we don’t have a lot of time now. So here it is.” He gave him a shake. “You’re messing up! None of this is what you want and it’s not what Thor wants! So stop doing it!”

“But...!” Loki gulped, choking on the next swell of something up his throat. He tasted copper. “But...if I burn...if I go back to being... _that_...then I’ll turn into him.”

“And if you don’t, you’ll make Thor cry. A lot. I mean a _lot_.” The boy gave him another shake. “Is that what you want?”

“No...” Loki looked aside to Thor. He was picking himself up from the ground. “No. That’s not what I want. But...”

“But what?” The boy huffed a breath, impatient.

Loki’s insides clenched. He bit the inside of his cheek.

There was no stopping it.

“I don’t want to be _trapped_ forever, either.”

The boy rolled his eyes massively. He released him with a shove.

“Of course you don’t. You’re _Loki_. But if you’d bother looking around you’d see you’re already trapped. You’re hiding from Thor and the future and everything else because you’re _afraid_. You’re afraid of what you might turn in to and making old mistakes. Now is that a very Loki thing to do?” 

“What’s the alternative?” Loki looked to him, indignant. “To dive in? Get involved? Manipulate events and people until I get what I want?” He jerked his head in the direction of their older self. “That’s something he would do.” He clenched his fist. “I _won’t let myself_ be him.”

“Since when does Loki ever have to be just one thing?”

The boy folded his arms over his chest, waiting there to meet Loki’s stunned eyes when they returned. His own held no pity for him.

“You grow,” he said. “You change. At least if someone doesn’t come by and kill you off like you did me. But the story never ends, Loki. Not really. You make up new ones. Some are better than others. But when you make a mistake – and you will – at least you can do it knowing Thor will be there to pick you up afterwards.”

He threw his hands in the air.

“At any rate stop pretending nothing affects you! You want to change but you won’t? It’s dumb!”

Loki opened his mouth to speak.

Then he shut it.

He looked aside to Thor, still bracing himself against the wall of the cell as wave after wave of Gram’s power slammed into him.

He was not much changed for it.

Thor had always been one to live in close proximity to truth.

But the walls of the cell were beginning to crack. Truth had been too long denied here.

“Can you...help him?” Loki croaked.

The boy rolled his eyes again with an exasperated sigh.

“No. I’m dead! Remember? I can’t do anything! Except send you on a massive guilt trip, and...well...maybe this.”

He leaned forward to place one small hand on the sword blade where it jutted from Loki’s chest. The light radiating from it began to dim. The blasts began to ebb.

“Just do one thing for me?” the boy whispered as Gram returned to a more normal state.

Loki looked to him, met his eyes. He nodded, now that they were close.

The boy’s eyes were a wide green. A perfect mirror for his own.

“Take good care of him?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not like I’m in any position to make threats, but it’s the least you could do. After, you know, killing me.”

Loki nodded, and grinned a little, before the last of Gram’s power faded and so did the boy’s image.

Darkness closed in over the cell once more.

Loki buckled, coughing. He spit a black stain of blood across the stones. More of it already trailed from the wound in his chest and back, seeping into his clothes.

It made a quiet _pit, pit_ sound as it dripped in the moment it took Older Loki to raise an eyebrow. Look him over.

“What is this?” he sneered.

“Gram may be a truth-sword of legend,” Loki laughed a little, wheezing. “But it’s still a sword.”

“But it does no real harm. It’s power—”

“It’s power was turned off.”

Loki pushed himself up enough to sit on his knees. He lifted his head, smiling, a single trickle of blood finding its way over the corner of his mouth.

“I’m curious.” He coughed, still grinning. “If I die, does that mean you cease to exist?”

Older Loki’s eyes blazed with a sudden anger. He bared his teeth in a snarl.

“No! You can’t—!”

“I don’t have to.” Loki jerked a thumb over his shoulder to where Thor had finally picked himself up. He could already feel a rumble begin to reverberate through the floor. “Only he does.”

He gave a two-fingered salute with bloody fingertips, and fell over.

“Be seeing you.”

The last thing he heard was Older Loki’s enraged shrieks, and the sound of crashing thunder.

And, maybe, a boy’s giggle.


	2. Chapter 2

Loki didn’t remember much of what happened after that.

Oh, he remembered the pain. The sword. Being run through the ribs. He remembered bleeding out and gasping for breath and that tug in the back of his throat that made him choke and want to cough in the moments before everything went dark.

But the pain…

The sense of being crushed.

Something breaking.

Like being burned from the inside out and the white hot rage of truth ripping wide open.

Truth was never gentle. It was jealous and violent and vindictive.

He thought he heard thunder. Thought he saw lightning. But those things had become so common in his memory and awareness they almost ceased to be remarkable.

Not that they ever stopped inspiring awe, but the spark of them triggered so many other memories...

When he was young – the first time – and crawled into Thor’s bed to hide because he was afraid of a storm.

The first time Thor picked up Mjolnir, and simply _had_ to give her a try.

The first time they kissed…

Loki didn’t know how long he was out. It seemed like an age. Mixed voices echoed together down the long, dark corridors of his memory. He didn’t know which voice was his – if any – yanked first one way between them, then another.

Chasing shadows.

Always chasing. Never catching.

*****

When he came to, there was only more pain.

But it was the preferable kind. The physical kind.

Loki was hardly a stranger to it.

He arched up high where he lay against a hard surface, gasping for breath, sensation returning to a body that was a reluctant participant.

He reached out blindly, hand groping. Finding first a boot, then a familiar drape of cloak.

He pulled it into a fist, smearing blood from his palm onto the fabric.

Fortunately, it was already red.

“Thor,” he coughed, gasping, still half choked on the rupture in his organs.

“ _Brother._ ”

And Thor was there. Always there. Large and warm and hovering with worry. He grasped Loki’s hand from his cloak and linked their fingers, kissing them, heedless of any slick blood on their skin.

“Loki…you’re awake! Oh, Loki…I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…tell me what I must do to help! I don’t know how to heal…only destroy! Loki…”

He was babbling.

Any other time Loki would have taken great delight in his fluster. For now, he paid it little heed, shaking his head rather in inarticulate frustration.

What was Thor _apologizing_ for? Odin’s balls.

Loki tried to sit up, keeping hold of Thor’s strong and steady grip for leverage. He didn’t make it very far before succumbing to another round of violent coughs.

Blood flecked between his teeth.

“…stone…” He rasped through tight hitches in his shoulders. “…healing stone…”

He pointed to one of many coffers pushed aside among the old and dusty junk filling the small chamber around them.

Loki recognized the room.

A stash of stolen treasures from a previous life.

Thor nodded frantically, reluctant to let go of Loki’s hand. He did just long enough to rise and reach for the coffer, digging through it and finding the small stone within. Wrapped in a dark cloth.

He returned quickly to Loki’s side and tore the front of his tunic open with one forcible rip, then crushed the stone in his palm and let the dust fall.

Slowly…too slowly…then more quickly, then all at once, Loki’s flesh knit and began to heal. Loki closed his eyes and hissed with the uncomfortable tingle of it.

A few moments, and he could breathe a lot easier.

Thor could, too.

“Norns be praised,” Thor exhaled, and sagged over him, kissing the stretch of newly formed pink skin.

…which was actually still quite sensitive.

Loki yelped and coiled around him, pushing Thor up and away, moving himself as little as possible.

“…ribs…Thor, ribs…ribs!”

Thor jerked away as though scalded, retreating. Though he did not go far. He remained hovering near, relief and gratitude softening the weary lines of his anguish.

“Forgive me...”

Loki dropped to lay his back flat on the mat, head tipped to look up at the ceiling.

Now that he was not dying, he properly remembered this place.

A small room. Barely more than a cluttered storage closet. Tucked away near the end of a little-traveled hallway in a quiet corner of Asgardia. Just the sort of place to hide away something one did not want to think about.

Or someone.

The child Loki that came before had made this place his home...or as close to it as he could. The small mat for sleeping was still there, musty from disuse. Towards the end, that version of Loki had spent most of his nights with Thor instead, warm in his huge bed...

The Loki of now closed his eyes, recalling the memories as one would a film or play he had seen, rather than something he’d experienced.

He breathed, one hand coming to rest on his chest and the other over his brow as his heart slowed back to normal. The pain of his wound ebbed once his body was again whole.

The mat was a lot smaller than he remembered.

“Bless your thievery, brother,” Thor laughed, tired, as he rubbed his eyes.

“ _Nngh_ ,” Loki groaned, closing his eyes to rest. Every part of him burned, sore. “Careful, Thor,” he murmured. “I’ll think you were condoning that sort of thing.”

He fingered the edge of his torn shirt. Followed the ripped hem.

“You know healing stones work just as well over clothing?”

Thor laughed, weak as it was.

“I do know,” he nodded. “But I had to see. I had to know you would be well.”

His heart was bare in his voice. Loki could feel it reaching for him. Wanting.

Loki turned his face aside, eyes sliding open to look somewhere else. _Anywhere_ else. He picked some distant spot on the wall to focus on. He wouldn’t look at Thor.

His hand drifted idly over his chest, feeling for the place where the sword had sliced through him. Not even a scar remained now.

“I think you just wanted to get my shirt off,” he mumbled.

It seemed appropriate, somehow, that something so mundane in appearance as a storeroom would house Loki’s choice of treasures, such as pilfered healing stones. Perhaps that was why little Loki had been content to be shut down there in the first place.

Loki swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat.

He didn’t have to suppose. He’d always known.

Thor huffed another weak laugh at Loki’s attempt at humor. He sounded as tired as Loki felt.

They had both been through an ordeal.

For a moment, it was quiet. Loki kept his eyes turned away. Thor sat near, resting, though Loki could feel his eyes on him. Like the prickle of a fire’s heat on his skin. He could feel the air grow heavy with the weight of the unsaid.

He still refused to look at him.

Finally, Thor spoke.

“Loki?”

Loki stilled. For a few heartbeats, he didn’t let himself breathe. Rather, he felt a tremor begin somewhere low in his gut, making him suddenly overly aware of his exposure. Not just the torn shirt, but the bared stretch of his throat. All of his secrets exposed back in that dungeon of a room. He wanted to curl onto his side and make himself small. Block Thor’s inquiries (he knew they were coming). Shut out the world. He steeled himself against the urge by will alone. To give in now would be an admission of guilt.

“Loki?” Thor ventured again, even softer.

“What,” said Loki. Flat and without inflection.

Thor shifted. He put a hand on his boot rather than reach for his brother.

“What is it?” he asked, practically straining forward in his earnest.

“What is what?” Loki responded coolly, maintaining his focus on the wall.

“Loki, please. Do not do this.” Thor inched a little bit closer. “Do not hide from me.”

“Hide what? I’m right here.” Loki swallowed very, very slowly. “And you already saw everything.”

“I thought...you felt nothing...” Thor let out a breath as well, his voice trailing away. Loki could imagine too perfectly the wondering reach of his eyes. The tiny flinch in his shoulders that was Thor holding himself back from moving. From reaching out.

So many spoke of Thor in awe. So many spoke of his strength and marveled at his endurance. Counted his feats as legendary.

So few appreciated or could even fathom the depths of his restraint.

“It isn’t true, is it?” he finally spoke again, quiet. Rasping in the still chamber.

It was quite possibly the last thing in all the known universes that Loki wanted to answer. But it was so like Thor to see straight to the heart of him. To see through all tricks and disguises. To drag to the surface that which Loki did not want to confront with childish, disgusting sincerity.

Loki swallowed hard, and delayed answering for several moments. He considered not answering at all.

He could lie, but Thor would know.

And...well, Thor deserved better.

“No,” Loki said, and closed his eyes. Lightly furrowing his brow as he surrendered to inevitability. “Not anymore. Maybe it never was.”

“Oh, Loki. I’m so sorry...” Thor had spoken the words already – Loki assumed he meant about the sword – but he said them again now. Different, but no less heartfelt. “I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. That you...that you had to leave. Change. That you felt you had to hide everything.”

He spoke as if to the walls of the chamber. As if he was alone, and did not expect Loki to listen.

Or perhaps speaking to a different Loki altogether. One he had not had the chance to say goodbye to.

“I am sorry, little one—”

“ _Don’t._ Thor...don’t. Just stop.”

Loki pushed himself up. Slowly. Carefully. Still tender in places. He didn’t know if the sudden surge of feeling through his chest was born of selfish reasons – wanting to spare himself hurt – or for genuine concern for his brother, bearing the weight (yet again) for something of which he was not remotely responsible.

He rested his weight back on his hands, at last looking to Thor across the meager distance that seperated them.

It was a hard look, the beginnings of anger and already seeded irritation.

“None of this has to do with you,” he bit. “Do you understand? It is not your fault. It...it was me.” He shook his head, growling reluctant admission. “It was me and my own stupid...foolish designs. You were simply dragged along for the ride, as always.”

He glared down at Thor’s boot, within easy kicking reach.

He kicked it. All the energy he could summon after sitting up.

“You...you’re more than enough. You’re...” _Too good_ , his mind supplied for him. _Deserve better. Should have left well enough alone._ All of it warred for dominance at the forefront of his mind, and Loki wrenched his face aside. Rubbing his eyes as he groaned frustration.

“It _does_ have to do with me,” Thor answered, with a quickness not at all attributed to the slow-witted. “For it has to do with you. Do you not understand? We are linked, you and I, and I would have it no other way. Even if all is not my doing, can I not still mourn it? Can I not be sorry that such a thing had to be at all?” His voice broke as his eyes searched, growing desperation behind their light. “Will you not allow me to share your burdens? Why do you not trust me with your troubles, your fears?”

 _Your love?_ Loki could practically feel the words unspoken, bursting from Thor’s heart.

He shook his head again.

“Because...!” And tried desperately to think of a reason. Loki’s eyes darted about the room, falling back on older instincts to see if there was a place he could run. Escape. Somewhere he could hide and not have to confront the burning revelation of Thor’s light. “Because, Thor, this is _me._ ”

At any rate, it was easier to speak not having to look at him. Only a true monster could turn their back on a face so unguardedly hurt like that.

“This is me, brother. This is my mistake. And I have to fix it. I have to...I...”

He pushed a hand back through his hair, scratching at a spot on his neck. Another old habit.

Thor reached out, turning Loki’s chin back to him.

Loki made the mistake of looking up. Into those eyes.

Thor looked at him evenly, with the certainty and steadfastness of mountains, though both hurt and anger banked in the depths behind his gaze.

His eyes were so blue.

“Perhaps you do,” he said, even and sure. “But you do not have to do it alone.”

Loki shook his head. Immediate. Rejecting. It was all there. The love. The hate. The soul-crushing fear of loss. If Loki ever needed a reason to remember why he pushed out the desire to feel anything in the first place, it was this: because it hurt. It hurt so much. Caring made everything difficult, something an older version of himself learned once already when he fell through the darkness of the cosmos.

_Sentiment._

Even if Loki knew he could handle anything the universe decided to throw at him, that didn’t mean Thor had signed up for the same thing. And it hurt.

“No...no, you don’t understand, Thor. I can’t...I can’t...” Feeling. So intense. Like _burning._

Burning led to a future he didn’t want to happen.

But feeling nothing – _not_ burning – meant stagnating. Being caught. Trapped.

“I can’t...”

Loki reached out, blindly, as if to feel for the walls of the cage he’d crafted for himself.

“I can’t... _breathe_...Thor...!” Loki reached for him, suddenly, as panic seized his chest and for a moment he was reduced to a child again. Scared...no, _terrified_...and wanting his brother.

Thor was there to catch him, arms open even before Loki fell. He pulled Loki in and tucked him against his chest, his head beneath Thor’s chin. Loki was not so small as he used to be, but he still fit. Somehow perfect, with a rightness Loki had somehow managed to forget.

“Loki...I have you. I have you...”

Thor did not tell him it was alright. Did not try to shush or comfort him with empty words. He would not belittle Loki’s pain by dismissing it, or pretending to understand when he did not. But he did hold him, and let him shake, a pillar and rock for Loki to cling to when he needed one.

Good old Thor.

Thor’s arms around him. His warmth and his strength. Steadfast as a flame while Loki forever fluttered about, like a drawn moth.

Close, back, close, back again...

Loki grabbed onto him and held tight as he shook, his breath coming uneven. Staggered. Heart sprinting awkwardly in his chest. He didn’t know if he cried – though he supposed there was no way he couldn’t have – and later would derive some comfort in the ignorance of his own lack of dignity. Knowing only Thor was there to see it.

Guilt and hope and grief and joy all crashed down at once, coming together as a wave over sand, trying to drag him back with the tide.

Loki held on for a very, very long time. Until he was calm again.

Then, he could breathe.

“I’m sorry, Thor.” Face turned down. Cheek to Thor’s chest. Hair plastered on his brow from perspiration. “I’m so, so sorry...”

Thor held him, stroking his back, kissing his hair and asking nothing of him.

“For what?” he rumbled, quiet and gentle.

“For everything.” Loki’s voice was wrecked. Broken. He closed his eyes and breathed in deep against Thor’s chest, surrounding himself in the warm, airy scent of his tunic. “For...all of this. Dragging you into this mess.”

He’d said it once before, back in the cell with the older Loki, but it bore repeating.

“You deserve better.”

“I am not sorry for any of it,” Thor answered easily. “It is what I want. It is what I choose.”

He nudged Loki’s eyes up. Loki went, drawn, though it was with an effort. He wanted to keep hiding.

He met Thor’s eyes.

“I want you,” Thor said. “All of you. I would rather face the worst with you – the worst _of_ you – than to go on forever without.” His gaze fell heavy upon Loki, weighted with sobriety. “You think I deserve better, but I am selfish, brother. So selfish I would make every part of you my own.”

His voice trailed away. He cupped Loki’s neck and brushed his cheek with his thumb, looking over him in ceaseless wonder.

Then, with a deeper knowing.

“And I am very possessive of what is mine.”

The old familiarity of it was a pain in Loki’s chest. Thor’s hand warm, gently rough against him, the way he had always held him in times before. Loki closed his eyes briefly to steel himself against the craving that rose within him. The hunger. Bodily betrayal.

“You saw what happened in there, Thor,” he whimpered, sliding his eyes open again to see him. “You saw everything. You know...” He hesitated. Swallowed. Strained to keep his voice steady and even. “You know what’s going to happen. What I’ve done. I can’t change it. I’ve tried. I’ve tried everything I can think of...”

He laid his hand over Thor’s against his cheek, holding it close that he could turn his face. Clench his eyes shut. Give in just a little to the urge to kiss his palm.

“I don’t want to drag you down with me.”

“I know what may happen, yes,” said Thor, his breath catching only a little at the kiss. “But Loki...what if that future happens because I let you drive me away? Your future self never spoke of me as if I was still present, with him. What if that future happens because we have these same words, and I forsake you? What if you fall because I am not there to drag you back up?”

Thor shuddered, though for a very different reason than Loki’s lips against his fingers.

“I cannot let you fall again, Loki. I _will_ not.”

Loki laughed a little, dropping his gaze and looking away. Scarcely able to bear Thor’s hope. He thought of the argument he’d with himself – quite literally – of destiny versus free will. He’d always thought his feelings on the matter had been quite clear.

But now...

“What if I’m already fallen?” he murmured, a tightness in the back of his throat. It was not really a question. “How can you do anything but forsake me after...after your little one?”

“Because,” said Thor, brushing his fingertips along the skin of Loki’s jaw. Loki hated – and loved – how the words seemed to come so easily from him. A rightness in their meaning as they left his lips. “Because I can choose to forgive you, brother. Because I can choose to believe that...perhaps...” His breath hitched. Perhaps speaking the words was not as easy as Loki had thought. “Perhaps he is not so gone as either of us think.”

Loki flinched. That hurt most of all. More than feeling. More than burning.

Thor’s hope, dragging him back towards the light of his sun. Where there was nothing else to do but burn.

“You would forgive me for strangling you,” Loki muttered, wretchedly, “while my hands were around your neck.”

Thor’s laugh startled them both, disrupting the intimate quiet.

Loki missed that sound.

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling a moment’s brightness. “Though perhaps it will never come to that.”

It faded quickly. The laughter. The lightness. Thor leaned in close and lowered his voice.

“Please, Loki. I know I cannot truly force or control you in anything, but please...”

He closed his eyes. Leaned in and breathed deep the scent of Loki along his jawline. He mouthed gently against it, cushioned in his hair.

“I need you. I cannot bear being apart from you. Do not ask me to endure that.”

Guard sufficiently dropped, Loki had no time at all to brace himself for the jolt Thor’s contact sent through him. His breath caught. He shivered. He turned his head and tipped it aside in automatic response, bearing more of his uninterrupted throat.

“You make a convincing argument,” he said, closing his eyes. For a moment allowing himself to imagine it was possible.

After all, what was the point of freedom if it was spent all alone?

“Cheater.”

Thor grinned, warmed with delight at how easily and suddenly Loki opened to him. He tightened his arms around him and pulled him in, letting his teeth drag along Loki’s exposed neck.

“I learned from the best,” he rumbled, squeezing him. He kissed beneath Loki’s chin, nosed along the thin skin beneath his ear. Kissed there to see if Loki was as sensitive in that spot as he had ever been.

He was.

Loki melted.

“ _Nnhnn..._ ”

“Let us cheat fate, you and I,” Thor breathed. “Together.”

It was natural. Like the most natural thing in all the Realms. Opening to Thor like a flower to the dawn. The rightness of it settled in Loki’s heart, soothing the pain of burning and replacing it with something smaller. Something softer, but a much more intense flame.

He heard the words Thor spoke. _Us_ and _I_ and _you_ and _together_.

Thor’s belief, big enough for the both of them.

“I believe you.” Loki lifted his hand to catch Thor’s, linking their fingers. Then and forever. “Norns help me, I believe you.”

He turned his face to meet him, their lips only just brushing. A taste of the desire Loki had denied himself for so long.

“Thor...”

“Loki...”

Their faces were close. So very close. Loki hadn’t seen Thor’s eyes so close in a very long time; the vibrant blue of them the only splash of color in the dark closet. He had all but forgotten just how much Thor could bare himself in a single look: the depth, the wonder. Loki could all but see the words _yes, yes, you have come back to me at last_ rising from Thor’s heart.

His hand trembled where they gripped.

Then Loki watched the black of Thor’s eyes swallow the blue, and the tide of need overflowed, sweeping them both into its wake. He met Thor’s mouth in a sudden surge and felt Thor plunder his own, a sound somewhere between a growl and a sob rumbling deep in his chest.

Loki gave beneath him, lips parting, body opening, feeling the cool, empty air against his skin at once replaced with Thor’s solid warmth. Eyes closed, Loki wound one hand into Thor’s hair, clenched tight to hold on, as a gasp and moan slipped free of his throat. His hand that held Thor’s broke free to roam: up his chest and over his shoulder, feeling him, coveting him, reminded of what it was like to be surrounded by his brother, soft and hard all at once.

That first kiss lasted a very, very long time.

“ _Ah—_ ”

Loki made the slightest of sounds upon breaking for air. He opened his eyes to see Thor, still there, still real, his look dazed with wonder and no small amount of desperation.

Loki touched his face. Soft. Reverent. As if to rediscover with all the same euphoric awe every part of him. Every feature that he loved. Finding his way always back to his lips, thirsty to drink from them again.

“Brother...” he whispered. Most cherished, most worshipped of all words.

They fell into each other again, quite willingly drowned.

Loki unfolded beneath Thor’s hands, every hard edge turned soft and yielding. The tension of his resistance melted away.

“Loki...oh, _Loki_...” Thor whispered his name like a holy thing. “How I have _missed_ you.”

“Miss me no more, brother,” Loki murmured, quick in between moments when his mouth was otherwise occupied. He spoke as much with his touch, pressing into Thor with reassuring firmness, hard enough to leave marks of blooming red and pressure-white as proof of his passing. He gasped against his mouth in quick, frantic bursts, unwilling to abandon their kiss for any longer amount of time than that. As if he could compensate Thor for lost time, repay him in this way for being the cause of so much pain and grief.

Each new touch was an apology. Every drag of Loki’s hand through Thor’s hair or across his skin a mark of promise. A visceral signing of the oath that bound them together. Loki felt Thor’s hand trail up his back and reached for it, guiding it to his front. He spread Thor’s palm across his chest that he could feel his heartbeat, the tremor Thor ignited in him when he found his ear once again.

Thor’s touch was as warm as ever, though not as big as he remembered it being.

That was good.

When he laid his own hand over him now, it meant they almost matched.

Loki whispered Thor’s name. Worshipped it. Until he ended their kiss abruptly with a gasp.

He drew back to find Thor’s eyes. Heated. Hungry.

He licked his tongue over red flushed lips and could taste Thor there. Still feel the press of him.

“Not here,” he rasped, quiet. As if fearful of being heard. Loki darted in to claim Thor’s kiss once more and spoke against his lips, murmuring only for him: “I want you in my bed. Not theirs.”

The All-Mother had assigned this room to his child self as a sign of their regard – which was to say, none at all – and the possibility of another Loki’s presence who may or may not have been dead was suddenly far too close for comfort.

Loki linked his arms around Thor’s shoulders and pulled him in, whispering.

“Let me take you away from here, where you can speak to me more of defiance.”

“Yes.” Thor’s voice came unsteady, shuddering at the touch of Loki’s mouth. Strands of loose hair fell over his eyes. Clung to his kiss-damp lips. “Yes...”

Loki smoothed Thor’s hair back under his palms, touching their brows together. His fingers caught in dirty golden tangles and he felt the grime that still covered Thor in places, though it did nothing to dull Thor’s heady scent. Or Loki’s want. He clung to him and kissed him as he wrapped them in magic, taking them away from that place. That home of increasingly hostile scrutiny.

He landed them in his apartment in New York City...small, hardly as lavish as what was considered normal in Asgardia, but it was private. Well warded against intruders or scrying. Loki felt the ground beneath them become solid again, stumbling only a little as his feet touched down.

He dropped a hand to the sword sheath on his belt, heavy with weight. Reminded that Gram was still there.

Had Thor put it back?

He broke off their kiss with a hand on Thor’s shoulder, breaking away only to breathe. To reorient themselves in the dark.

“Did you kill him?” he whispered.

Thor continued to touch him, hands absently wandering, fingers brushing along the shape of his clavicles, the bones at the end of them. The line of his shoulders and the smooth fall down to Loki’s slender arms.

“...I...do not think so,” Thor said with an effort, frowning, as if speaking and even breath itself was less important than doting on him now. “He disappeared.”

Loki nodded, privately wondering if Thor would even be capable of killing him, even in such a state. He cupped Thor’s cheeks and held him there as he brought their lips together again. Soft. Almost chaste.

“It’s alright,” he whispered, unsurprised, but glad to know. For future reference. “No matter.”

He drew back enough to meet his eyes, his own look soft, lashes flitting briefly on his skin as he lowered them. Reached to his front to undo his belt. He took off the sword sheath and let it drop to one side with a signature weight on the carpet-shielded floor.

A priceless relic. Dropped unceremoniously in the dark. And neither of them cared.

Then Loki stood there, trousers slung low and his shirt in tatters across his front. He set his hand on one hip and tipped up his chin, posing with a light in his eyes that was more than just that of the window playing off his gaze.

“You have only me to trouble you now.”

Thor looked at him, and – oh – he _was_ trouble, and it set a fire alight in his bones that shone through his eyes. There was the brief tightening of muscles along Thor’s neck and shoulders, as if he sought to restrain himself again. Then he abandoned all effort at once and crowded suddenly towards him. Growling, kissing Loki hungrily, pushing him back and up against the waiting bed.

It would always be like this. Always a chase. A give and take of good and ill, where Loki in his mercurial fancy took off for one new aim or another as they arrived, shifting with the wind, while Thor remained forever steadfast. Always there to welcome him back. To pick him up. To pull him into his arms no matter how far Loki had traveled or how battered Thor had become in his following.

Loki thought Thor had rather the worse end of it.

Then all thought ceased as Thor surged forward and claimed him, body and mind and heart. He pushed deliciously back into Thor’s kiss, greeting his tongue and stealing a taste with his own. Loki’s hands slipped between them to tug and pull at the clasp on his pants, loosening the material until it fell slack around Thor’s hips. He kept his hold there to pull Thor down on top of him as he dropped back onto the bed, his smile real – a touch challenging – and his laugh genuine, soft and breathy, shamelessly _happy_ , eclipsed in Thor’s shadow.

Thor greedily swallowed the sounds Loki made and echoed them back, both their breath rushing out at the ever-startling bright jolt of pleasure that was their contact. Loki’s garments were still a barrier between them; a barrier Thor was more than warrior enough to surmount.

He did not mean to tear them, but if they were sacrificed in the endless battle of dominance and submission between them – who held which role never fully defined – then it was not an entirely unpleasant loss. And Loki knew an excellent tailor.

“I need you,” Thor panted, growled. He bit and ground and kissed against him, making a keening sound into the hollow of Loki’s neck and shoulder. “However you will have me. I need you, Loki, _please_...”

Loki smiled up at Thor in a sort of giddy euphoria, planting the balls of his feet into the mattress to lift up his hips, tip his head back, allow Thor all the room he wanted to nestle, nuzzle against him. His back arched off the bed in response to the grind of contact between them, his own need suddenly achingly and painfully making itself known.

“Yes...oh yes...”

Loki spread his hands across his back, writhing against him, digging in his fingers to better feel the flex and bunch of muscles across Thor’s magnificent body. His legs parted, slipped around him, squeezed Thor’s thighs between his own, drawing one leg invitingly along the back of his calf.

“Thor...”

Loki was aware even then – dimly – of the urge to roll over, to present the long line of his unprotected back to his brother. To arch his hips into the air and tease Thor to greater lust if he did not comply. The urge to hide his face was as strong now – he made do now with his head tipped back and eyes closed – as the first time they had rutted. As if he had to shield some part of himself. As if he had to leave himself enough footing to flee should the need arise, so he would not fall too hard. Too completely.

He had to leave himself an escape.

...no.

No.

Loki steeled himself against the thought now. He wove his hands into Thor’s hair instead, kissing him deeply and firmly, drawing in breath where their noses crushed together as if to hold on, to brace his resolve. To forge a connection between them before his fickle nature won out.

Thor’s eyes were there to meet him when he opened them again, there and so close. Level and even. Loki touched their brows and gasped a hot breath ragged against his lips, maintaining a desperate eye contact as the warmth of pleasure and quivering delight warred with instinctive – fear? – excitement within him.

“Have me, brother,” he whispered, cupping Thor’s nape and cheek with his hands, wanting Thor to see him, bared down to the depths of his soul. “Just like this. Take me. Stake your claim inside me and do _not_ hold back.”

Thor shuddered, full-bodied, only able to answer Loki’s command – or was it a prayer? A plea? – with obedience and reassurance.

“I have you, my Loki. I have you...” He clasped their hands together and pressed them down on the bed above Loki’s shoulders, caging and sheltering him at once. “I have you, brother.”

The angle and weight of his pull was just this side of painful, making Loki’s gut swing low as if to abandon him. It sent a jolt through him down to his feet that made his toes curl. The sudden notion of being trapped, unable to move, his freedom denied even in this one small way made the urge to flee rise in him again, words like _run away_ and _escape_ darting like startled rabbits through his thoughts.

Given what had just happened in the cells – perhaps even before that – Loki refused to ever let himself be bound again. Never trapped. Never.

And yet...this was Thor. He didn’t mind so much being trapped by Thor.

There had been a time when he bound himself to him willingly.

Loki breathed, deep and deliberately, overly aware of the rise and fall of his chest against his brother’s, of the sinful way he arched and writhed beneath him. He strained to rock his hips up in the search for more friction against his painfully erect prick trapped there between them, his hands now unable to soothe his own need or guide Thor to do the same.

“Thor, _please_...have me.” Loki strained, groaned, desperate for Thor to take such anxious thoughts from him. To replace them with only thoughts of him. His scent. His feel. The fall of soft hair like a sheltering curtain over them both.

“I do have you, brother. I do.” Thor released one of his hands, perhaps sensing his sudden rigidity, and brought it to the back of Loki’s neck. Cradled him there. Holding their faces close as they touched. Kissed. Unknowingly echoed the words of a human marriage rite.

Then he shifted, lowering the bulk of himself, and ground down against Loki’s cock, his own just as hard and straining. Gasping at the contact and the nothing between them.

“I—nnn- _gahh_...” Thor broke off, breathless and wordless. “Loki...” He surged forward, animal-like in his quest, cupping the back of Loki’s neck and kissing him helplessly, the tip of his cock catching behind Loki’s balls, at the furled heat of his opening.

Loki was catlike in the way Thor’s hand on the back of his neck made him go all but limp, moaning into his mouth. It broke into a gasp as Thor ground against him, and he arched in response. Against him. Into him. He dropped his head back on the blankets, dazed, lips parted as he drew his tongue along his teeth, a heated want in his glower.

With his free hand he reached down between them. Putting Thor where he wanted him, the rutting fool. He bit at his mouth and growled, taking hold of Thor’s heat and pushing it to his rear: that part of him all too ready to yield.

“There...”

And Thor pressed forward. Slowly. Carefully. Perhaps he tried to speak, but any attempt at words came as out mere noise. A rough, low growl.

Loki was nowhere near content with his considerate pace, and in the same moment reached around his backside to grab, pull him in rough and sudden in the same instant he arched his hips, plunging him deep. Like a blade sliding into its sheath, finding home. Loki cried out something thoughtless and primal, swallowing Thor’s resounding gasp up in another crush of mouths. His hand tangled into Thor’s hair to hold on, deep grinds of his lower back working Thor in deeper, wanting – no, _demanding_ – he take him quickly. With all his strength.

He turned his face into the rough scratch of Thor’s beard to kiss. To bite at his earlobe and jawline and neck. Encouraging him with nuzzling gestures and whispered affirmations only he could hear.

“Yes...yes, brother...!”

Thor’s breath was punched from him, feeling Loki’s body suddenly give way. Opening so sweetly and beautifully, and so, so very hot. The unexpected searing pleasure of it made him nearly collapse, but he caught himself, panting close to Loki’s mouth, until he rallied himself with a growl and grasped Loki’s hips hard enough the skin whitened around his fingertips. He straightened for better leverage and tossed back his hair, tangled and sweaty around his shoulders.

His eyes met Loki’s as he thrust, bottoming out completely before pulling back. Then again, and again, and again.

Loki fell apart beneath him.

Finally... _finally_...Thor was inside him and moving, hiking him up against his body, holding him like a tool for his use. Fucking with furious, focused abandon.

If Loki had any further words or worries – or any thoughts at all, for that matter – about what lay behind them or still before them on this journey, then they were lost. His freed hands pushed to either side of him to spread across the blankets, their only use that of _holding on_ as Thor bucked him hard enough to lift him off the bed, weight rocking onto his shoulders. Head tipped back. Eyes closed. Mouth slack as each new thrust of Thor inside pushed a cry from his throat, more often than not half-choked as he tried to gasp in the same breath, body quivering all the way down to the throbbing head of his cock.

It felt so _good_.

The bed knocked against the wall with the force of their fucking, every thrust pushing them a little further up, until Loki was nearly pinned against the headboard. (A fact which probably did not endear them at all to the neighbors. Loki later would be relieved he’d warded and reinforced the walls against noise and damage) The sheets became a lost cause, covered in filth now, with their mingled sweat and battle-dirt. Loki near tore it with the clench of his hands. Still, Thor kept on, trying to reach deeper, as if he could somehow crawl inside his brother. So he could show him Loki’s name written in the depths of his heart.

He could feel Loki tightening. Drawing close. Thor grasped his prick firmly, pumping it once, twice, wanting so desperately to feel the twitch of him as he came. Needing it. The heat of his spend on his skin.

“Thor, _please_ ,” Loki begged, no thought to spare for dignity as he cried out, arched and moaned. “I want...I need...!”

It was over all too soon.

The sound Loki made was glorious, and Thor swallowed it up in a devouring kiss. He pulled Loki crying aloud over the edge, skin hot, body one long line of ecstasy drawn taut, managing only a few more thrusts himself before he joined him. Crashing into bliss with such force Thor’s vision whited out for several long moments.

Then he collapsed, gasping, onto his brother.

Loki’s hair lay dark on his brow, curled into damp locks as he turned his face half away as though to hide, unable to muffle the whimpering cries he made even as his pleasure ebbed, his voice breaking under each new wave. His body left a limp and quivering mess.

He blinked a dazed look away towards a distant spot on the wall, jolts of electric sensation still throbbing up his back and uncurling heat through his loins. Thor’s warmth inside him was the crowning reward that made him shiver still with delight, clenching his weak hands in the hot, breathless aftermath of their coupling.

He didn’t even mind Thor near crushing him beneath the fall of his weight. His hand trailed trembling, almost uncertain fingers into his hair instead, light and tentative in their touch before they settled. Smoothed him back.

He breathed his name, soft and quiet and cherished.

“Thor...”

Loki sighed, long and sated. He closed his eyes to turn his face in against Thor’s cheek, breathing him in, the scent of sex and sweat and the faintest brush of ozone making the air sharp.

Thor did not pull out for a long while. Loki could feel him softening inside. Shrinking a little. The thunder in his blood at last quieting.

Finally, with a grunting effort, Thor slipped out, a trail of his own spend following thin and milky.

Loki felt the sudden absurd urge to scoop it in his hand. To push it back in. To make Thor’s claim on him indelible. But doing so would require him to move, which he couldn’t even begin to fathom just then.

This claim would be permanent enough for now.

Besides, they would do this again. He didn’t doubt. Over and over. Thor would claim him and Loki would claim him back. They were each other’s forever. A bond unsunderable. A weave not even the Norns could sever.

It was all very dramatic and maudlin, his thinking, when Thor grinned suddenly stupidly and curled in around him, nuzzling his cheek, pulling him in close against his chest and refusing to let go.

Loki laughed a little, breathless, careful not to disturb the quiet, and pushed a hand against his chest in token protest.

The one time they had fallen into bed together before – when Loki was in this form – Loki had not lingered after. He’d left, and just then could imagine Thor too perfectly cold and alone, spent but unfulfilled. Bearing the weight of abandonment in insufferable quiet. Loki shivered under the chill of guilt.

Thor held him now, refusing to let go.

They did not speak. There was no need. Instead they held each other, Loki’s hand resting over Thor’s chest, over the beat of his heart, content to watch the city light through the window as the sky changed. Grew lighter with the birth of a new day.

The light caught on their lashes. The long lines of them, indistinct in the dark of who was who. Where one of them ended and the other began.

There they would stay, Loki decided, until sleep claimed them or their thirst for each other rekindled.

Or perhaps both.


	3. Chapter 3

Loki lost track of how many times he and Thor wrestled together in the increasingly tangled mess that had once been his bed. He stopped trying to count the different ways one of them slumped across the other in the wake of it, hot and sweating and panting for breath.

On top of and beneath and behind and above...there seemed nothing they didn’t try. No desire or hedonistic urge they didn’t satisfy.

Making up for lost time, he supposed.

At times they would rest, lulled at last into a doze – warm, comfortably content – until they roused to wakefulness and went back to it with renewed hunger.

Neither of them got much sleep that night.

When they finally did, it was only to wake with a proportionately reluctant grogginess. Loki groaned and rubbed his face as he squinted out toward the bluish light of morning as it came creeping through the window blinds.

Was it the next morning? Or the morning after that...?

He didn’t really know.

He lay there for awhile, letting himself drift towards awareness, listening to the sound of Thor’s breathing. Loki could feel the soreness in his lower body already making him stiff. Even a small shift of positioning there on the bed made him wince, make him groan a little. He came to settle again with his head on a bunched up pile of blanket that served as a pillow, turned so he could see his brother.

Thor’s arm was still around him, gripping briefly tighter when Loki moved, to hold on.

Loki smiled a little.

He could feel Thor’s seed deep inside him, warm and heavy. It lingered every bit as much as the bruises on his skin or the marks on his neck. Claims of ownership. Signatures on a contract. He closed his eyes and felt his belly grow heavy with the memory of the things they’d done. Giddy delight creeping toward his head.

Eventually, he wanted to get up, and put his hand over Thor’s around his hip in an attempt to pry his wrist off.

Gently.

He didn’t want to wake him.

Thor stirred anyway, overly attuned to Loki’s presence, even in sleep.

“Mmmmmnnn...”

He reached out, blind, with a groggy, wordless protest to grab onto him. Unwilling or unable to open his eyes just yet.

“Rrmmm...’oki...stay...”

“Nhh...Thor.” Loki chided him gently, smiling despite himself. He glanced beneath his lashes toward his brother with a swell of affection, and patted his hand. “Thor. Let me up.”

Thor rolled over towards him, keeping hold and using his superior bulk to neatly splay himself across the bed, trapping Loki half beneath him. His nose landed between a shoulder and pectoral and he inhaled deeply, smiling with still half-asleep bliss.

“...hhhhmmmmmm...no. Stay. F’rever...”

Loki grunted, succinctly trapped under his weight. He sighed and dropped his head back onto the mattress. (The mattress proper. Even the bottom sheet that would have otherwise covered it had long been pulled off in their tussling.) Tension in his body melted as he resolved to be stuck a few moments longer, patting Thor’s shoulder placatingly.

“I have to pee,” he murmured.

Thor chuckled. Warm.

“Oh.”

And still didn’t release him. If anything, he hugged him tighter.

“...then you’re coming back, yes?”

“Mmm. You have my word.” Loki turned to kiss his forehead, speaking against his skin. “And I’ll make my return well worth the wait.”

Thor let him go after a moment’s further reluctance, clinging even a little longer than that as Loki pulled away.

“Hurry,” he whined.

Loki patted his arm in reassurance, keeping contact for as long as he could before he slipped away, one more light and teasing kiss on his mouth.

“Worry not, brother. I won’t be long.”

There was a bathroom adjacent to Loki’s bedroom. He didn’t have to go far.

His first steps were slow. Stumbling. Working blood back into the extremities of his limbs. Loki pushed a hand through his hair and shook his head, clearing it of the last lingering grogginess.

He closed the door once he was inside, flipping on the light, though he kept his face turned down a moment before he risked glancing up at himself in the mirror mounted over the sink.

Loki lied. He didn’t actually have to pee.

He braced his hands against the sink instead and looked at himself, eyes moving slowly up and down. Regarding his own face. He ran a little water and splashed it onto his cheeks. Over his eyes. Rubbed some across the back of his neck. Normally he didn’t enjoy the feeling of sleeping when he was filthy, but this time...well...it felt worthwhile to make an exception.

He leaned his weight against the sink and let the water run.

Of course he thought about leaving. It would have been easy enough. He could sneak out without Thor’s noticing. He could probably be gone for hours before Thor got up to look for him. Loki could think suddenly of a dozen different tasks that needed doing. Hundreds of places he could be. Nevermind the awkwardness of leaving Thor alone in his own apartment...

Loki let his head hang, looking down to himself. Sweat-stained. Coated in places where Thor’s spill had dried. He spread one hand over his belly and sighed.

He could feel Thor there still, and – for the briefest of moments – allowed himself to imagine what he could do if he chose to take advantage of that creative power dumped inside him. It was so strong...

Loki clenched his eyes shut. A moment of fantasizing was all he allowed, attributing the thoughts to another mindset: another time when he would have abused such things without hesitation.

He sighed again, and turned the water off.

Eventually he returned to the bedroom, a little cleaner, his hair newly wet and slicked back behind his ears. Thor had since fallen back to sleep, in the exact position Loki had left him.

He crossed to the bed on quiet feet, and sat down on the edge.

The light dip of movement was enough to wake him.

Thor blinked his eyes open, and looked up. Like the bloom of a sunrise. His smile spread slow and dopey across his face, completely and utterly in love. As if he had forgotten all they’d done the previous night (nights?) and only now remembered. Love sweeping through him brand new and fresh and as old as the moment he’d first realized it. He opened his arms toward Loki without a word. Trusting they would be filled.

Loki didn’t have the heart to disappoint him.

He smiled, and slid back into Thor’s embrace, coming to rest with a perfect fit. Moaning softly as he kissed him.

He spread a hand across his chest, enjoying the feel of Thor’s firm build.

Thor wrapped a hand around Loki’s own, twining their fingers. He lifted them to his mouth and kissed the back of his palm, making Loki’s breath stagger as his tongue slipped between his fingers.

Just when Loki had thought he’d recomposed himself. Just when he thought he’d finished with the frantic tumble that was their lovemaking and recovered from the sundering of the walls around his heart that had kept Thor at a distance for so long, Thor reminded him of it all with a single kiss. Loki’s head swam with a sensation like falling, gasping at each new touch on his skin, nerves reignited that had settled back into quiet complacency.

They looked at each other, wondrous. Amazed that sensation could spark again so soon...already...after they had just...

Thor eased himself down onto his back, drawing Loki with him.

Another kiss. Deep. Slow. Thorough. Thor tasted him and breathed him in. For a long while the only sound beyond that of muffled city traffic was their rushing breaths: the tiny grunts and moans back and forth as they wordlessly greeted the morning, and each other.

Thor let Loki’s lips go only reluctantly and nuzzled along his neck, back into his damp hair.

“You smell less like I have had my way with you, brother,” he murmured, maybe with a note of loss. Then he grimaced as he sampled himself. “I smell like I have done battle.”

“Well,” Loki hummed, tilting his head against his shoulder. “It’s not untrue.”

Thor grinned, more than a little proudly.

Then he lowered his voice, conspiratorial.

“Tell me. Can your bathing chambers hold us both, together?”

“It could.” Loki curled forward to conform their bodies, speaking to Thor quietly, in a hushed whisper as he walked two fingers up his chest, following the line of his collar. “But I rather enjoy the way you smell.”

“Truly?” Thor’s brow lifted. Incredulous. “I do not offend you?”

He stretched suddenly, his arms above his head, every muscle pulled into sharp definition.

Loki would have enjoyed the view if not for the sudden need to turn his head and gag. He lifted one hand to fan in front of his face, faking a cough.

“Well, perhaps in moderation...”

He paused a moment, then took the opportunity to seize Thor beneath his raised arms. Fingers digging in just hard enough to test and see if Thor was ticklish.

It was one of the many things he’d forgotten when he came into this form.

And it seemed Thor was.

Thor laughed hard, curling in on himself.

“Ahh! Loki! I yield! I...! Ohh—!”

“Oh, you yield, do you?” Loki leered, merciless, and didn’t let up. “That is not what you said last ni—”

Thor retaliated suddenly, rolling them over and dislodging Loki’s hands from his ribs. He aimed his own for the soft, unprotected parts of Loki’s sides, somehow immediately finding that _one_ spot that had always worked when they were children. Just along his side. At the edge of his ribs. A little to the back.

It was still there.

Loki made a positively undignified yelp and recoiled, pushing against Thor with hands and feet in the manner of a cat trying to escape being held.

Inarticulate protests gargled among strangled breaths.

“—Thoo-oor...!”

Thor’s cackle was one of triumph. Shameless, he used his greater bulk and strength to hold onto him, digging his fingers into that one sensitive spot a few more times, just to hear Loki squawk and mewl and almost fall off the bed in his efforts to break free, before Thor finally relented.

They collapsed backward onto the thoroughly ruined mattress, panting and wheezing.

“Truce?” Thor breathed, pushing damp, tangled hair from his face.

“Truce,” Loki panted. He strove to scowl, despite his grin. “For now.”

Thor laughed, patting the small of Loki’s back where his hand rested.

“Never let anyone tell you you are not magnanimous, brother,” he grinned.

“No.” Loki flopped down against him, catching his breath, and lightly slapped his shoulder in playful return before he rested his cheek against his chest, melting boneless into his warmth. “Nor will you tell anyone of my mercy. I should hate for the world to think I’ve gone soft.”

“Of course not,” Thor hummed, closing his eyes and letting himself come to rest. His fingertips lightly pressed into Loki’s skin. “Your softness is only for me. My own.”

Loki hummed a noncommittal acknowledgement. He rubbed a gentle circle on Thor’s chest while their hearts calmed. Breath returned to normal. Then he kissed the same spot.

He did enjoy the way Thor smelled, really.

“We should bathe together. Then I will make waffles.”

“Your waffles are only for me, as well. Come.”

Thor sat up with a grunt, shaking off the last bit of drowsiness from his head. He rotated his neck to crack a few protesting joints, then took Loki’s hand, using it to pull him up from bed and towards the bathroom.

Loki smiled, following with dreamy leisure.

Perhaps he already knew bathing would take a longer time than either of them imagined. It was a fairly new apartment, after all.

There were so many surfaces to christen.

*****

It did take awhile.

Several times over they washed, and washed again. Every time they reluctantly parted, it took only a glance, a heated look, the merest brush of skin for them to fall together once more. The bathroom floor and counter became slick with water, the mirror fogged, the very air heavy with steam and the scent of their joining over and over.

Both their endurance was inhuman, and Thor was a god of fertility. Among other things.

Finally, they did manage to part long enough for Loki to at least wash himself. Thor watched and made no attempt to hide the heat in his eyes. Loki met him and leaned in for one last long, lingering kiss, then put a hand over Thor’s mouth to stop it from progressing any further.

He pulled away, laughing, wrapping himself in a towel and heading for the door with a reminder of the promised waffles.

Thor stayed under the shower spray, scrubbing absently at himself.

Loki made for the kitchen, tucking his towel about his waist so it hung loose against his hips, not bothering to dress beyond that. He pushed a hand back through his hair to move it from his eyes, clinging to the back of his neck where it would dry on its own time.

He turned on the kitchen radio and set about the task of breakfast, dancing across the tile in bare feet and singing along when any tune in particular he liked came over the crackling static.

Which was most of them.

“’ _Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate..._ ”

His voice was light and easy. His hands breaking eggs and mixing batter with the confidence of practiced ease. Thoughts turned away from what happened in Asgardia and for a moment he let himself forget, rationing butter and milk. Caressing batter into the cooking iron with a large spatula.

It felt good to forget. Even for a moment.

“ _Shake it off, shake it off..._ ”

Eventually Thor came in, clad in a simple towel much in the same way as Loki, the steam of the bathroom gushing into the cooler, drier air of the rest of the apartment. Announcing him like a herald.

“ _I never miss a beat, I’m lightning on my feet..._ oh.” Loki glanced up from the stack of waffles he’d already managed to accumulate, butter and syrup standing by within easy reach. “There you are.”

He pushed the plate towards him. The stack should have been enough to sate his brother’s notorious appetite. Though he could always make more.

“Hope you’re hungry.”

“Always,” said Thor, with a soft, besotted half-smile crinkling the corners of his eyes that made Loki think he did not mean just for food.

Loki hummed, nodding towards him with a returned smile. He carried the plate of waffles over to the small kitchen table and set them down, gesturing for Thor to take a seat. He set out appropriate cutlery as well, and a steaming mug of coffee.

“I should be the one making you serve me,” he said as Thor pulled out a chair. “After the things you did.”

Loki turned back to the counter to see to the next waffle batch, putting a hand on his back to emphasize a pretend limp.

“You loved every moment of it,” Thor snorted, helping himself.

“It doesn’t make me any less sore.”

“You will heal soon enough,” Thor hummed over the first sip of his coffee. He paused, licked his lips, and raised an eyebrow at it. He glanced about the table in search of cream, and settled for the syrup meant for the waffles instead when he could find none. That pleased him well enough.

Tony had more than once informed him of Thor’s utter lack of anything resembling taste when it came to Midgardian food and drink, often referencing his fondness for vanilla lattes.

Thor would slurp them noisily in Tony’s presence just to bother him.

“You are still of as divine stock as ever, brother.”

Loki stood at the counter, his back to Thor, chin tipped down towards his chest as he let the radio play on, only half listening. Thor’s words made him suddenly very aware of an awkwardness about his person. A tension not of the carnal sort.

He stared down at the waffle maker, a warped reflection of himself twisted on the metal casing.

“Am I?” he breathed.

Thor glanced up, looking over to him.

He set his mug of coffee down very carefully, noting the sudden heaviness.

Loki paused in his task to straighten, lifting up his hand to the level of his eyes as though for inspection. He turned it in the bright sunlight pouring in through the kitchen windows and flexed a deep part of himself, watching as the shade of his skin turned to deep cerulean blue. Raised lines of heritage crept down his arm. Marks any versed scholar in the Realms would have been able to read.

Loki stared at them.

“Sometimes I feel I’ve been torn apart and put back together so many times...”

He left the thought unfinished, closing his hand into a fist, and willed the color to fade. Back to pale Asgardian hue.

Thor watched him, as breathless as he ever was at seeing Loki change.

“Odin’s mother Bestla was Jotun,” he said, careful to keep his voice low. He looked down to his coffee, cupped the mug in both hands, as he spoke. “Did you know? I didn’t, for the longest time.” A wry half-smile lifted his face. “The king of the gods himself half a frost giant, and even I less an Asgardian than the lowliest farmer there.”

“Was she?”

Loki remained passive. Unaffected by the change. Uncaring. It seems a small thing now, his heritage, after going through so many other changes. In many ways he was not the same person he was as when he began even this life.

And yet a light flickered in the depths of his eyes. A meaning that remained hidden within, as were so many things to do with him, it seemed. Perhaps it was only the context of it. The secrets. The shame. The self-loathing. He remembered those now and recalled them with an inward shudder, a cringe and sorrow and the tiniest bit of hatred.

Was this what it meant to feel again?

Loki made himself stop staring at the waffle iron. He turned instead to look at Thor, offering a smile, though it was small and shallow.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

Hardly the first hypocrisy he could add to his long list of grudges against Odin. He added it anyway, filing the information away for later.

He turned fully to lean his back against the counter while the waffles cooked. One arm folded over his chest as he sipped his own coffee – already prepared to the specifications of his liking – and murmuring over the rim.

He made no mention of Thor putting syrup in his.

“Perhaps none of us are ever fully what we seem.”

Thor seemed for a moment to hesitate over his next words, looking to his coffee for bravery. Then he said them anyway.

“Perhaps instead we are what we choose to be? We are what we make ourselves.”

Loki smiled. That felt like Thor. As subtle as a lightning strike and as blunt as a hammer, with the hope of a hero.

Norns, did he love him.

“Then perhaps some of us simply cannot make up our minds.” Loki sipped his coffee, eying him over the cup’s rim.

Thor cut into his waffles, drenched by then in butter and syrup. It seemed less breakfast and more edible mush by the time it made it to his mouth, though he at least swallowed before he spoke. He was not _that_ boorish.

“Well, one of us must be the interesting one.”

He tried to smile, to play off the growing sense of unease in the kitchen, and failed miserably.

Eventually his eyes dropped back to his plate, fork held loosely, almost comically small in his enormous hand. He fidgeted with it, letting quiet reign, until even that slowed to a stop.

“Is that why you did it?” he murmured, scarcely over a breath. Taking another bite of waffles as a means of distraction. “Because you couldn’t make up your mind?”

Loki hummed, acknowledging. But not overly committed. He used his drink similarly as an excuse to lower his eyes. To partially hide his face from Thor’s view.

“Did what?” he murmured, and propped one heel against the foot of the counter. It was a stalling tactic, of course. Avoiding something he didn’t want to discuss. But also, if Thor was going to bring up some past transgression of his, he was going to have to narrow it down.

If Loki was avoidant, then Thor had no qualms about being the brave one.

“Is that why you decided you had to change?”

Loki was quiet. Eyes turned away. The radio played on, ignored for several songs’ worth by then.

Loki sipped his drink, even as it began to grow cool and tasteless.

That was always the question, wasn’t it?

Why Did Loki Do It?

Loki couldn’t help the swell of a half-hearted laugh at the irony. It choked off low in his throat. Didn’t quite make it out other than as the sound of an aborted cough. His chest grew tight, and he swallowed against it.

“If we are what we choose to be,” he said, “then yes, I suppose that’s why I did it.” He spoke tightly, but without real conviction, and gave up on his drink.

He set it aside and turned back to the waffle iron, seeing to the next batch before they overly browned.

It was easier to speak to Thor of such things when his back was turned.

“Wouldn’t you have wanted the same?” he asked. Low. Murmured. “You recall what I was like, brother. Before.” Angry. Bitter. So full of hate he could scarcely breathe. “Anyone would have wanted to find a way out.”

“That is not—” Thor began, then shook his head. “But...how could you know?” He looked to him, straining forward in his chair. “How did you know it would be a change, and not just an end?”

Loki imagined perfectly well Thor could guess at an answer to that one.

He wouldn’t have liked what he guessed.

He kept his back turned, attentive to his task, releasing a waft of steam as he turned the iron over and opened it. Pried the cooked batter loose to dump on a plate. Then he set about replacing it with more and let the steam hiss. Let the radio play on.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Or maybe I did.”

He held the spatula aloft and to one side, much as one would hold a dagger about to throw.

“What would you do if I said it was all premeditated?”

Sounds in the kitchen went very still. Thor had visibly lost all interest in his breakfast.

Oh, Loki could guess his thoughts.

Which would have been worse? To think that Loki _didn’t_ know what would happen, that he needed so badly to escape his existence that he simply gave up. That he would have happily chosen oblivion over a future of continuing on as he was. Or to think that he had known? That he understood perfectly well what he stood or gain or lose with an attempt at reincarnation. That he knew how it would hurt both himself and Thor...and then did it anyway?

One was despair, the other cruelty.

Which would bring Thor more sorrow to think upon?

“I do not know,” Thor confessed quietly, after a long moment’s pause.

By then Loki had lost his appetite too, though he hadn’t possessed much of one to begin with.

He stirred half-heartedly at the bowl of remaining batter, distant and without interest. Perhaps he’d known this conversation would eventually happen. Though, all the same, he’d not wished it quite so soon.

Old Loki must have known what would happen. It had been his design. Loki himself only remembered it now as if from half-sight. A tool who had taken part, rather than the craftsman. Wasn’t it Old Loki who had said he would rather die than become stagnant? But then, wasn’t it Thor who had summoned the child Loki back to life? Surely Old Loki couldn’t have predicted that happenstance (unless he could, which Loki found too terrifying to contemplate). But if the child was Thor’s preferred corporation, had not the old version still accompanied it? Whether Thor willed it or not?

It was hardly the first time the Loki of now had mulled over such things, and it gave him the same headache as before.

Old. New. Child. Now.

So many modifiers.

Loki gave up at last on the pretense of breakfast and stacked what he’d made onto a plate, moving it over to the table. He set it down but did not seat himself, standing instead, eyes cast down on the meal.

“I don’t either,” he admitted with a sigh. “Though, now that I think on it, I’ve yet to see a reaction from you at all that is not lusty abandon. Tell me, brother.”

Loki rested his weight on one hand down upon the table, leaning in closer to where Thor sat.

“Do I inspire nothing else in you?”

Thor looked up at that, startled and shamed by the very question.

He reached out across the table, covering Loki’s hand with his own. To pin him. To reassure him.

“You inspire _everything_ in me, Loki,” he said, with nothing less than Thor-branded heartfelt sincerity. “My greatest happiness. My deepest despair. My brightest anger and my sharpest joy. I should hate you, and instead I love you. I should rid myself of you and all I can do is hold on.”

He rose a little from his seat, crowded Loki’s space in his utter earnestness. Eyes full of the fire from his heart.

“I should fear you, and instead I want you. How could I not?” He squeezed Loki’s hand, perhaps harder than he meant to. “You are _Loki_. You are _everything_ to me. Never doubt that.”

Loki flinched from his movement, and might have fled had he not been held down. Or at least cringed back from Thor’s vehemence. As it was he leaned back as far as the reach of his arm would allow.

The soul-bearing in Thor’s eyes should have put him to shame. Should have negated any doubts Loki had.

But he only raised an eyebrow in return, unimpressed.

“I don’t doubt it,” he said, flat. Without emotion. “But I would see it.”

He didn’t know where the sudden urge for malice came from. Perhaps it stemmed from the knowledge of what had happened in the cell. What he’d gained. The ability to feel – as Old Loki had put it, to burn – lost and so suddenly thrust upon him again, for good or for ill.

He would at least see Thor suffer the same.

“How can you not be angry with me? What I‘ve done... How can you not rage? Or weep? Mourn what you’ve lost. Do _something!_ ”

Loki darted his free hand between them, jabbing two fingers against Thor’s side, where he knew there was a scar left from where once Loki had stabbed him. He ground against it as if to reopen the old wound. To see if he could make it hurt.

His voice dropped to a venomous hiss between his teeth. Lips drawn back in a sneer.

“I should think your husband would be gravely disappointed if fucking was your only solution to avenge his death.”

Lightning sparked in Thor’s eyes. Enough to make Loki rethink his choice of words.

“You are my husband. _You!_ ”

Thor made a fist and brought it down loudly against the tabletop, rattling plates and silverware. Nearly cracking it in half.

Loki winced.

“Would you have me avenge you against yourself?” he shouted, though his volume did not maintain. It broke quickly, faltering. “I _mourned_ you! Husband...I searched all of Asgardia for you, and all of Midgard after, fearing the worst. I went to Coney Island. Did you not know? Alone, with the sunlight and laughter hollow around me without you there...”

Loki blinked, needing a moment to remember.

Coney Island?

Oh.

Oh yes.

That was where the child Loki had promised to take Thor after their handbinding. Done far away, in secret, with no witnesses save for each other and the Norns. It would have been their honeymoon had that same child not slipped away the very next morning.

Slipped away and devoured a bird.

Thor’s eyes sharpened with the onset of crystal tears. He ignored Loki’s hand pressing into his side, save for how he reached down and took it in his own, held it firm.

“And I did rage, alone and aimless, when I never found you,” he said. “I had no way of knowing if you lived or no. You never sent word. Never strove to contact me.”

He stepped back, letting both of Loki’s hands drop as distance returned between them. He made no effort to wipe at his eyes.

“Forgive me if I would rather celebrate your return to me than dwell on being without you.”

Loki narrowed his eyes. Watched as Thor withdrew, and turned away.

No, he hadn’t known Thor had gone to Coney Island. He hadn’t cared enough to look, back then. Most likely he wouldn’t have cared even if he had known. He’d been something of a prick at the time.

“Celebrate...”

Frustration and immediate guilt struck sparks together in his heart. It wasn’t the reaction from Thor he’d wanted. It left him feeling empty, hurting Thor and not even achieving his goal. He would have been more satisfied if Thor had come right out and hit him.

Ah, but that was the nature of punishment, wasn’t it?

It hurt all the more when it came from within, rather than without.

This was feeling, wasn’t it? This was what Old Loki wanted.

Loki closed his eyes and took a breath, brows drawn tight together.

It was a small wonder the old bastard thought he could succeed if it took so little to make Loki riled. It hit so intensely.

“Very well. Celebrate.” He waved one hand, dismissive, and turned away. “Celebrate, and forgive all my trespasses.”

“Would you rather I did not?”

“I think you should do what you want.” Loki spoke tightly, masking the storm beneath his voice. Hiding how his insides twisted as around a dagger. “It’s what I would do.”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to rail and rage and stab something, and he knew not entirely why, except in that perhaps it would inspire Thor to do the same. Frustration was a tightening noose around his neck, and suddenly the kitchen seemed too small. The tiny apartment. The tiny world.

“Are you?” A similar tightness and control sharpened Thor’s voice. He looked to Loki, but Loki would not look back. “Are you doing what you want?”

Thor went on, allowing Loki no room to answer.

“I want _you_ , but I do not wish to trap you. I want to avenge you, but I do not want to hurt you. It would achieve nothing but more pain for both of us. We have hurt enough, you and I.” His hand clenched into a fist at his side, but remained there, tense and held in restraint. “Even if we cannot escape pain forever, I would not have us seek it out.”

His voice rose a little at the end. Loki noticed it. He stood with his back to him, hiding Thor completely from his own sight, presenting to him only an indifferent jawline.

“Not enough,” he whispered, a line of corded tension drawn down the side of his neck. Through his shoulders. Loki didn’t think he’d been hurt enough by _far_. Not when compared to the things he had done.

Selfish as it was, he would have preferred Thor to be the deliverer of his penance, though he was proving stubborn in his participation.

Loki hugged himself, the tightness in him having gone unnoticed until his joints began to ache.

“I don’t know what I want, Thor.” His words teetered on the point of breaking. He kept his back towards him as he spoke, distant, as if unaware of it. “I don’t want to become that thing that was in the cell. But to escape it means living only as a facet of myself. I want to give you everything without giving up anything. I want you to hate me, punish me for what I’ve done...but I don’t want you to leave me.”

He lifted his eyes, glaring out the nearest window, towards a fate unseen.

“At the same time I want to run and run and never stop running until even the Norns can’t find me anymore...”

Thor’s voice, when it came, was quiet and steady. Calm after such a sudden storm.

“Then give me everything,” he said. “All of you. Give me everything, and I will give it back to you, absolved. Let me carry everything you are, and so take your freedom.”

He took a single step closer.

Loki held his breath.

“You know, I think it is that supposed future self of yours who is the broken one,” Thor went on. “Not you. I think he is the one missing parts of himself, and wants you to live a half-life in order to make you become him, even while letting you think you’re making an escape.”

He moved closer. So close it would have taken nothing to reach out and touch.

Loki didn’t realize how badly he wanted it until he could taste it.

“And if he is you, well...” Thor’s tone turned wry, gently teasing, as he became more grounded. As if the words he spoke derived from something greater than himself. “You did always lie.”

Loki let out the breath he was holding through his nose – hard – upon hearing those words. As if that would staunch the rise of nauseating sensation in his gut. He didn’t know if it was loathing or grief, or where it was aimed, mourning and hate and revulsion all writhing, roiling in his blood. He could only wonder how he was not frothing at the mouth from so much feeling.

So much _burning_.

He shut his eyes, bearing it all with a stoicism that did not feel innate so much as very well-trained. Like lying.

“ _Damn it_ , Thor.”

He turned around at last, graceless and uncoordinated. His hip bumped the table and in doing so he put a hand on its edge to steady himself. To feel something solid when his head was awash with a spectrum of emotions all crashing in at once.

How many times had they done this already?

How could either of them live like this without going mad?

Perhaps they already had, long ago.

“Must you shine hope on _everything_ you touch?”

He glared at Thor, lips pressed tightly together so they would not quiver. So they would not make a path for the burning sting behind his eyes. He tried to look fierce, though he was sure he missed the mark by far.

Thor laughed again, brief, but not cruel.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose so.”

They were silent again for a moment, and then he carefully – hesitantly – reached out to brush his thumb across the corner of Loki’s mouth. Achingly soft.

“Loki,” he whispered, looking him over again in that infuriatingly newfound way. “Last night, I begged you not to hide from me. I meant it. I do not know what passions fill you now, riotous, too long held back.” He stepped in closer, closing the last of the distance between them. “But if you show them, I will not forsake you. Every storm passes, brother. This one, too, shall calm.”

His hand lingered on Loki’s cheek. He bent his head, meeting Loki’s only slightly more diminutive height with the barest touch of their brows.

“And I have learned it is unwise to try and hold the lightning back, when it wants to course through you.”

Loki did not flinch away this time, even as he knew it was coming.

Yes.

There it was.

The barest touch. The spark that ignited. Sending a jolt and charge through Loki’s body. Loki closed his eyes and furrowed his brow for a moment as if in pain, but also in wonder.

How?

How could they have spent the last several hours with every part of them in contact and still something as simple as a touch could awaken him again?

Then came the tremble. The full-bodied shudder. The tumbling of walls as a brush of Thor’s hand swept them aside, allowed the tide to crash in around.

Loki groaned, opening his eyes. Letting Thor fill his gaze.

“Is that permission to strike your thick head when you say something ridiculous?” he mumbled. A jest to soften the landing, for what little good it did. Thor’s words sent heat through him like none he’d ever known.

Thor smiled, and laughed a long, unsteady breath. He cupped Loki’s cheek and tipped up his head – not trapping him this time, only holding – that he could lean in and meet him.

“Always,” he said, low and thick. “Always. Only...please, do not stab me?”

Thor’s hand cupped the back of Loki’s neck, cradling into the perfect fit, familiar and warm and strong and _right_ and where it always should be. Loki’s eyes fell half-lidded, his lips parting automatically to breathe into him when Thor drew near.

He huffed a laugh, blowing loose locks of hair from his face.

“I promise nothing,” he said, and kissed him. Both hands rose to curl into Thor’s hair and pulled him in, the rest of his body quick to follow, where Loki already missed him.


End file.
